Exhibited in 1841 with the quotation, '"That star has risen" - Rev. T. Gisborne's Walks in a Forest' (No. BIO8). Possibly a companion picture to 'Glaucus and Scylla', also painted on a square canvas of the same size though less definitely intended to be seen as a circular composition; this was exhibited the same year and is now in the Kimbell Art Foundation, Fort Worth, Texas. Both were bought by B. G. Windus at the Academy. However, the composition and treatment are much closer to 'Bacchus and Ariadne' , exhibited the year before (Tate Gallery 525). Both show a return to Titian and the Venetians, the figures in 'Bacchus and Ariadne' having been directly copied from the picture of the same subject which had entered the National Gallery in 1826 and of which Turner had a copy.

Turner experimented with variously shaped compositions on square canvases in a number of exhibits from 1840 to 1846 as well as some unexhibited paintings of the same period (see Nos. 521-3 and 525-6). The format, perhaps developed from his vignette watercolours such as Nos.272-298, was particularly suitable for his funnel-like, vortex compositions, but created a problem over how to fill the corners. He seems usually to have begun by painting up to the edges, but close examination shows that he often modified the shape as he went along, completing them when they were already in their final circular or octagonal frames. However, in this case Turner, working out his composition on a discarded canvas (Tate Gallery 5508), had envisaged the circular format from an early stage.

The press, while delighting in Turner's Venetian subjects at the 184I exhibition, were united in their condemnation of the other wonderful fruits of a diseased eye and a reckless hand', as the Athenaeum for 5 June put it. To the Art Union, I5 May, this picture was 'another example of a great man's folly. It is far more like the dawn of creation - when "earth was without form and void" - before "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters”.’